Paradox Engine is so nakedly powerful that people are perhaps forgetting that it’s not as powerful as Prophet of Kruphix was for the most part. There are cases where Paradox Engine is much, much better but you have to do some work to get that going and you didn’t for Prophet. Prophet rewarded you for playing with other players who had untap phases and rewarded you with untap phases of your own. You can’t untap your artifact mana, but being able to untap your lands and creatures was usually more than enough. In Paradox Engine we have a card that requires us to do work to get it going, but once it gets started going, it might not be that easy for people to stop it.

Accordingly, I think we should build a Simic deck to memorialize Prophet of Kruphix. I thought about adding other colors to give us access to better spells with buyback, but ultimately thought better of it because I want to restrict myself a bit. Those restrictions will likely breed creativity. Besides, Simic gives us an awful lot to work with. Simic even lets us run two commanders for the deck — Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix and Thraisos, Triton Hero. This should both give us mana to use and things to do with it. We’ll want a lot of artifact mana and even if all we do is play a few cards like Brainstorm to get more mana from Kydele and untap our artifacts, Thraisos lets us use that mana to thin the lands out of our deck, improving our draws, improving our turns and getting us one step closer to decking ourselves. Since it’s so tough and easy to disrupt to get infinite mana with this deck, I’m OK running Laboratory Maniac for now. If you find yourself not able to win another way, it may be worth considering cutting it. However, for now, I want to jam it.

I feel a little awkward having advocated running Squirrel Nest — Earthcraft already in a deck this past few weeks since it would be so perfect here. In fact, let’s not say it “would” be perfect, let’s say it “will” be perfect because I’m not going to let a little thing like the same combo being fun in another deck stop me from running it here. Having Blue lets us run Opposition which is more degenerate than Glare of Subdual, which is fine with me. Squirrel Nest - Opposition is what drew me to Simic in the first place so many years ago. I even ran a Simic elf deck in Extended that ran both Intruder Alarm and Opposition on top of elves. Being able to go infinite with Sprout Swarm or Imperious Perfect is powerful and isn’t as durdly as it sounds for Extended — the deck managed to get a few PTQ Top 8 finishes with multiple pilots. I didn’t design the deck from scratch by any means, but I didn’t see anyone else running both Intruder Alarm and Opposition. It made the deck tougher to pilot but made it much more resilient. That was some of the most fun I ever had playing competitive Magic. I want those same shenanigans in EDH and I’m going to make it happen because this is my article. I’m not convinced combos like that are too oppressive for newer players because they’re easy to disrupt if they run enough removal and team up on you.

I think there are a lot of potentially good decks for Paradox Engine so I’m going with a deck that I’ll actually have fun with, will likely build in real life and will likely never take apart once it’s built. As if I needed another Simic deck, I bring you my Paradox Engine build.

Paradox of Kruphix ? Commander | Jason Alt

• Commanders (2)
• 1 Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix
• 1 Thrasios, Triton Hero

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Arbor Elf
• 1 Birchlore Rangers
• 1 Coiling Oracle
• 1 Elvish Archdruid
• 1 Imperious Perfect
• 1 Joraga Treespeaker
• 1 Karametra's Acolyte
• 1 Laboratory Maniac
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Nullmage Shepherd
• 1 Priest of Titania
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Wirewood Channeler
• 1 Wirewood Symbiote
• 1 Wood Elves

• Instants (13)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Capsize
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Cyclonic Rift
• 1 Dramatic Reversal
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Paradoxical Outcome
• 1 Plasm Capture
• 1 Simic Charm
• 1 Sprout Swarm
• 1 Whispers of the Muse

• Sorceries (6)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Recurring Insight
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Urban Evolution
• 1 Wurmcalling

• Enchantments (11)
• 1 Asceticism
• 1 Cryptolith Rite
• 1 Earthcraft
• 1 Exploration
• 1 Helix Pinnacle
• 1 Intruder Alarm
• 1 Opposition
• 1 Retreat to Coralhelm
• 1 Rhystic Study
• 1 Squirrel Nest
• 1 Sylvan Library

• Artifacts (15)
• 1 Alhammaret's Archive
• 1 Dreamstone Hedron
• 1 Gilded Lotus
• 1 Isochron Scepter
• 1 Mana Vault
• 1 Paradox Engine
• 1 Simic Signet
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Staff of Domination
• 1 Sword of the Paruns
• 1 Thought Vessel
• 1 Thousand-Year Elixir
• 1 Thran Dynamo
• 1 Umbral Mantle

• Lands (38)
• 14 Forest
• 14 Island
• 1 Alchemist's Refuge
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Hinterland Harbor
• 1 Misty Rainforest
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Simic Growth Chamber
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Temple of the False God
• 1 Yavimaya Coast

Buy This Deck

This seems strong but a little heavy on spells. That was deliberate in a way because while elves are a good tribe to build with, you could get away with running this deck totally creatureless as long as you protected Kydele and Thraisos. If you want to jam some more elves to make the elves you have better, that’s cool, but I would be hard-pressed to make more cuts from this deck. We’re already stuck running 98 cards with the two commanders as it is and everything in here feels necessary, or at least something I like and don’t want to cut.

Speaking of cuts, you may want to cut anything that feels boring. I don’t know if anything will be cut because it’s oppressive against casual decks because we need strong spells against better decks. No one is making you keep someone locked down with Spell Burst, but by the time you can really hose someone with that, you have so many non-land permanents that produce mana that you’re going to win inevitably anyway. I’m more referring to Laboratory Maniac. Usually in 75% decks I like to try to win by hitting them with creatures, but with this build, you’re almost always going to have to get a combo off to win. That’s OK because you have so many, you’re bound to get one. You can get infinite mana with Kydele, a way to draw cards and a card like Umbral Mantle. You can go infinite with Intruder Alarm and Perfect or Sprout Swarm. You can go infinite with Earthcraft and Squirrel Nest. There are a lot of ways to combo off in this deck and there is a lot of synergy between the pieces. However, if you start to get bored doing the same thing every game, maybe adjust.

Wurmcalling is an interesting addition that I only found by looking for buyback spells on gatherer. I like the idea of making 1 mana wurms, buying the spell back, tearing through your board with Skullclamp then tapping Kydele for like 50 mana. Wurmcalling is just a good spell and it even triggers Intruder Alarm for you.

This isn’t a typical 75% deck but we’re dealing with a card like Paradox Engine with a pretty high power level so if this ends up going out of 75% range when you build it, that’s fine. You don’t need every deck to be 75% and it’s tough to keep decks in that sweet spot. However, as-is, I think we’re pretty close and if your more casual friends feel oppressed, maybe encourage them to run some more interaction in their decks. That’s not me rationalizing a powerful deck, it’s my philosophy in general for 75% decks. Casual shouldn’t mean helpless. If they do nothing but ramp for 10 turns, you’d be hard-pressed to find a deck that won’t pants them. Just don’t be antisocial and you should be fine.

That does it for me this week. How are you brewing with Paradox Engine? Is there anything obvious to add or cut to this list? Do you want to build this? Is Simic the best color combo in EDH? Follow-up question, why is Simic the best color combo in EDH? Leave me some love in the comments section. Or any comments, really. I’ll be back next week with more Aether Revolt goodies to talk about, so until then, build with Commander 2016 stuff and have a great 2017. Until next time!